Wildlife (2 page)

‘I haven’t forgotten anything,’ my father said. ‘But I’m interested in thinking about the future now.’

‘Well,’ she said. She smiled at him. ‘That’s good. I’m glad to hear that. I’m sure Joe’s glad of it, too.’ And then we ate dinner.

The next afternoon, though, at the end of the driving range by the willows and the river, my father was in a different mood. He had not given a lesson that week, but wasn’t tense, and he didn’t seem mad at anything. He was smoking a cigarette, something he didn’t ordinarily do.

‘It’s a shame not to work in warm weather,’ he said and smiled. He took one of the golf balls out of his basket, drew back and threw it through the willow branches toward the river where it hit down in the mud without a sound. ‘How’s your football going,’ he asked me. ‘Are you going to be the next Bob Waterfield?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘I won’t be the next Walter Hagen, either,’ he said. He liked Walter Hagen. He had a picture of him wearing a broad-brimmed hat and a heavy overcoat, laughing at the camera as he teed off someplace where there was snow on the ground. My father kept that picture inside the closet door in his and my mother’s bedroom.

He stood and watched the lone golfer who was driving balls out onto the fairway. We could see him silhouetted. ‘There’s a man who hits the ball nicely,’ he said, watching the man take his club back smoothly, then sweep through his swing. ‘He doesn’t take chances. Get the ball in the middle of the fairway, then take the margin of error. Let the other guy foul up. That’s what Walter Hagen did. The game came naturally to him.’

‘Isn’t it the same with you,’ I asked, because that’s what my mother had said, that my father had never needed to practice.

‘Yes it is,’ my father said, smoking. ‘I thought it was easy. There’s probably something wrong with that.’

‘I don’t like football,’ I said.

My father glanced at me and then stared at the west where the fire was darkening the sun, turning it purple. ‘I liked it,’ he said in a dreamy way. ‘When I had the ball and ran up the field and dodged people, I liked that.’

‘I don’t dodge enough,’ I said. I wanted to tell this to him because I wanted him to tell me to quit football and do something else. I liked golf and would’ve been happy to play it.

‘I wasn’t going to not play golf, though,’ he said, ‘even
though I’m probably not cagey enough for it.’ He was not listening to me, now, though I didn’t hold it against him.

Far away at the practice tee I heard a thwock as the lone man drove a ball up into the evening air. There was a silence as my father and I waited for the ball to hit and bounce. But the ball actually hit my father, hit him on the shoulder above the bottom of his sleeve–not hard or even hard enough to cause pain.

My father said, ‘Well. For Christ’s sake. Look at that.’ He looked down at the ball beside him on the ground, then rubbed his arm. We could see the man who’d hit the ball walking back toward the clubhouse, his driver swinging beside him like a walking cane. He had no idea where the balls were falling. He hadn’t dreamed he’d hit my father.

My father stood and watched the man disappear into the long white clubhouse building. He stood for a while as if he was listening and could hear something I couldn’t hear–laughing possibly, or music from far away. He had always been a happy man, and I think he may simply have been waiting for something to make him feel that way again.

‘If you don’t like football,’–and he suddenly looked at me as if he’d forgotten I was there–‘then just forget about it. Take up the javelin throw instead. There’s a feeling of achievement in that. I did it once.’

‘All right,’ I said. And I thought about the javelin throw–about how much a javelin would weigh and what it was made of and how hard it would be to throw the right way.

My father was staring toward where the sky was beautiful and dark and full of colors. ‘It’s on fire out there, isn’t it? I can smell it.’

‘I can too,’ I said, watching.

‘You have a clear mind, Joe.’ He looked at me. ‘Nothing bad will happen to you.’

‘I hope not,’ I said.

‘That’s good,’ he said, ‘I hope so, too.’ And we went on
then picking up golf balls and walking back toward the clubhouse.

When we had walked back to the pro shop, lights were on inside, and through the glass windows I could see a man sitting alone in a folding chair, smoking a cigar. He had on a business suit, though he had the jacket over his arm and was wearing brown and white golf shoes.

When my father and I stepped inside carrying our baskets of range balls, the man stood up. I could smell the cigar and the clean smell of new golf equipment.

‘Hello there, Jerry,’ the man said, and smiled and stuck out his hand to my father. ‘How’d my form look to you out there?’

‘I didn’t realize that was you,’ my father said, and smiled. He shook the man’s hand. ‘You have a blueprint swing. You can brag about that.’

‘I spray ’em around a bit,’ the man said, and put his cigar in his mouth.

‘That’s everybody’s misery,’ my father said, and brought me to his side. ‘This is my son, Joe, Clarence. This is Clarence Snow, Joe. He’s the president of this club. He’s the best golfer out here.’ I shook hands with Clarence Snow, who was in his fifties and had long fingers, bony and strong, like my father’s. He did not shake my hand very hard.

‘Did you leave any balls out there, Jerry?’ Clarence Snow said, running his hand back through his thin, dark hair and casting a look at the dark course.

‘Quite a few,’ my father said. ‘We lost our light.’

‘Do you play this game, too, son?’ Clarence Snow smiled at me.

‘He’s good,’ my father said before I could answer anything. He sat down on the other folding chair that had his street shoes under it, and began unlacing his white golf
shoes. My father was wearing yellow socks that showed his pale, hairless ankles, and he was staring at Clarence Snow while he loosened his laces.

‘I need to have a talk with you, Jerry,’ Clarence Snow said. He glanced at me and sniffed his nose.

‘That’s fine,’ my father said. ‘Can it wait till tomorrow?’

‘No it can’t,’ Clarence Snow said. ‘Would you come up to the office?’

‘I certainly will,’ my father said. He had his golf shoes off and he raised one foot and rubbed it, then squeezed his toes down. ‘The tools of ignorance,’ he said, and smiled at me.

‘This won’t take much time,’ Clarence Snow said. Then he walked out the front door, leaving my father and me alone in the lighted shop.

My father sat back in his folding chair, stretched his legs in front of him, and wiggled his toes in his yellow socks. ‘He’ll fire me,’ he said. ‘That’s what this’ll be.’

‘Why do you think that?’ I said. And it shocked me.

‘You don’t know about these things, son,’ my father said. ‘I’ve been fired before. These things have a feel to them.’

‘Why would he do that?’ I said.

‘Maybe he thinks I fucked his wife,’ my father said. I hadn’t heard him say that kind of thing before, and it shocked me, too. He was staring out the window into the dark. ‘Of course, I don’t know if he has a wife.’ My father began putting on his street shoes, which were black loafers, shiny and new and thick-soled. ‘Maybe I won some money from one of his friends. He doesn’t have to have a reason.’ He slid the white shoes under the chair and stood up. ‘Wait in here,’ he said. And I knew he was mad, but did not want me to know he was. He liked to make you believe everything was fine and for everybody to be happy if they could be. ‘Is that okay?’ he said.

‘It’s okay,’ I said.

‘Think about some pretty girls while I’m gone,’ he said, and smiled at me.

Then he walked, almost strolling, out of the little pro shop and up toward the clubhouse, leaving me by myself with the racks of silver golf clubs and new leather bags and shoes and boxes of balls–all the other tools of my father’s trade, still and silent around me like treasures.

When my father came back in twenty minutes he was walking faster than when he’d left. He had a piece of yellow paper stuck up in his shirt pocket, and his face looked tight. I was sitting on the chair Clarence Snow had sat on. My father picked up his white shoes off the green carpet, put them under his arm, then walked to the cash register and began taking money out of the trays.

‘We should go,’ he said in a soft voice. He was putting money in his pants pocket.

‘Did he fire you,’ I asked.

‘Yes he did.’ He stood still for a moment behind the open cash register as if the words sounded strange to him, or had other meanings. He looked like a boy my own age doing something he shouldn’t be doing and trying to do it casually. Though I thought maybe Clarence Snow had told him to clean out the cash register before he left and all that money was his to keep. ‘Too much of a good living, I guess,’ he said. Then he said, ‘Look around here, Joe. See if you see anything you want.’ He looked around at the clubs and the leather golf bags and shoes, the sweaters and clothes in glass cases. All things that cost a lot of money, things my father liked. ‘Just take it,’ he said. ‘It’s yours.’

‘I don’t want anything,’ I said.

My father looked at me from behind the cash register. ‘You don’t want anything? All this expensive stuff?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘You’ve got good character, that’s your problem. Not that it’s much of a problem.’ He closed the cash register drawer. ‘Bad luck’s got a sour taste, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes sir,’ I said.

‘Do you want to know what he said to me?’ My father leaned on the glass countertop with his palms down. He smiled at me, as if he thought it was funny.

‘What?’ I said.

‘He said he didn’t require an answer from me, but he thought I was stealing things. Some yokel lost a wallet out on the course, and they couldn’t figure anybody else who could do it. So I was elected.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m not a stealer. Do you know it? That’s not me.’

‘I know it,’ I said. And I didn’t think he was. I thought I was more likely to be a stealer than he was, and I wasn’t one either.

‘I was too well liked out here, that’s my problem,’ he said. ‘If you help people they don’t like you for it. They’re like Mormons.’

‘I guess so,’ I said.

‘When you get older,’ my father said. And then he seemed to stop what he was about to say. ‘If you want to know the truth don’t listen to what people tell you,’ was all he said.

He walked around the cash register, holding his white shoes, his pants pockets full of money. ‘Let’s go now,’ he said. He turned off the light when he got to the door, held it open for me, and we walked out into the warm summer night.

When we’d driven back across the river into Great Falls and up Central, my father stopped at the grocery a block from our house, went in and bought a can of beer and came back and sat in the car seat with the door open. It had become cooler with the sun gone and felt like a fall night, although it was dry and the sky was light blue and full of stars. I could smell beer on my father’s breath and knew he was thinking about the conversation he would have with
my mother when we got home, and what that would be like.

‘Do you know what happens,’ he said, ‘when the very thing you wanted least to happen happens to you?’ We were sitting in the glow of the little grocery store. Traffic was moving behind us along Central Avenue, people going home from work, people with things they liked to do on their minds, things they looked forward to.

‘No,’ I said. I was thinking about throwing the javelin at that moment, a high arching throw into clear air, coming down like an arrow, and of my father throwing it when he was my age.

‘Nothing at all does,’ he said, and he was quiet for several seconds. He raised his knees and held his beer can with both hands. ‘We should probably go on a crime spree. Rob this store or something. Bring everything down on top of us.’

‘I don’t want to do that,’ I said.

‘I’m probably a fool,’ my father said, and shook his beer can until the beer fizzed softly inside. ‘It’s just hard to see my opportunities right this minute.’ He didn’t say anything else for a while. ‘Do you love your dad?’ he said in a normal voice, after some time had passed.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Do you think I’ll take good care of you?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I think so.’

‘I will,’ he said.

My father shut the car door and sat a moment looking out the windshield at the grocery, where people were inside moving back and forth behind the plate-glass windows. ‘Choices don’t always feel exactly like choices,’ he said. He started the car then, and he put his hand on my hand just like you would on a girl’s. ‘Don’t be worried about things,’ he said. ‘I feel calm now.’

‘I’m not worried,’ I said. And I wasn’t, because I thought things would be fine. And even though I was
wrong, it is still not so bad a way to set your mind toward the unknown just when you are coming into the face of it.

After that night in early September things began to move more quickly in our life and to change. Our life at home changed. The life my mother and father lived changed. The world, for as little as I’d thought about it or planned on it, changed. When you are sixteen you do not know what your parents know, or much of what they understand, and less of what’s in their hearts. This can save you from becoming an adult too early, save your life from becoming only theirs lived over again–which is a loss. But to shield yourself–as I didn’t do–seems to be an even greater error, since what’s lost is the truth of your parents’ life and what you should think about it, and beyond that, how you should estimate the world you are about to live in.

On the night my father came home from losing his job at the Wheatland Club, he told my mother about it straight
out and they both acted as if it was a kind of joke. My mother did not get mad or seem upset or ask him why he had gotten fired. They both laughed about it. When we ate supper my mother sat at the table and seemed to be thinking. She said she could not get a job substituting until the term ended, but she would go to the school board and put her name in. She said other people would come to my father for work when it was known he was free, and that this was an opportunity in disguise–the reason we had come here–and that Montanans did not know gold when they saw it. She smiled at him when she said that. She said I could get a job, and I said I would. She said maybe she should become a banker, though she would need to finish college for that. And she laughed. Finally she said, ‘You can do other things, Jerry. Maybe you’ve played enough golf for this lifetime.’